One of the charms of professional golf has always been that it’s a meritocracy. You shoot lower scores, you finish higher on the leader board, you make more money.
There are no long-term contracts where a player hits .203 for the season but still gets paid the $30 million he agreed to in a contract years prior. There are no bonus clauses for all-star game appearances or for the number of games played.
Want more money? Shoot better scores.
Yes, there are endorsement deals out there for players, but to a great degree, those deals still hinge on a player’s performance.
That’s what makes news of the new PGA Tour bonus pool a bit odd. First reported by Golfweek, the Players Impact Program is not so much about how a golfer is playing, but how a golfer impacts the game through a variety of metrics that don’t include scoring average or strokes gained: putting.
In a nutshell, the $40 million bonus pool will be divided among players who, in the language of television, move the needle. Those are players who bring positive attention to the game.
The metrics used will include the popularity of a player in Google search, how well a player brings exposure to his sponsors through something called Nielsen Brand Exposure, his Q ratings of familiarity and appeal, something called an MVP rating of the engagement players to generate on social and digital channels and finally something called Meltwater Index rating, which figures out a player’s value across a range of media platforms.
In other words, how popular is a player and how does that popularity help the PGA Tour and the player’s sponsors?
The Players Impact Program does smack of the rich getting richer. That’s something the PGA Tour already does with its World Golf Championships, a series of no-cut, high-profile events that help highly ranked players remain highly ranked merely by being in the field and getting a guaranteed check at the end of the week.
More money, and guaranteed money, was part of the promise behind a breakaway tour proposed by powers in Saudi Arabia last year.
The Premier Golf League sent formal offer letters worth “hundreds of millions of dollars” to a handful of players.
Although Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka — then the top three golfers in the world — had all came out to reject the PGL, the following players were reportedly linked to the new circuit: Phil Mickelson, Adam Scott, Henrik Stenson, Justin Rose, Rickie Fowler, Paul Casey and Koepka.
Soon after, a historic alliance was announced between the PGA Tour and European Tour after months of tense negotiations, fending off a rival bid to take a stake in the European circuit by the private equity group fronting the PGL.
That announced partnership includes collaboration on issues like media, playing opportunities, scheduling and prize funds and is widely seen as the first step toward an eventual merger of the two bodies.
So although the potential rival was thwarted, now comes a PGA Tour program that mimics the PGL’s premise of giving top players greater, and more reliable, income.
More money for top players
If that scenario sounds familiar, think back to when Greg Norman proposed a World Golf Tour, only to be shot down by then-Commissioner Tim Finchem, who then helped create the World Golf Championships, a nearly identical idea.
For those who need a refresher, Norman told the golf world of his master plan to start a competing tour back in 1994. He chose the pristine Sherwood Country Club outside of Los Angeles — where he hosted the Shark Shootout — revealing a proposal to start a mini-tour, beginning with eight dates in 1995.
The purses would be large and the fields small — only 40 players would be invited to each event, with 30 coming from the golf rankings and 10 through exemptions. Even the last-place finishers would receive $30,000 and all who signed up for the tour were to be given a yearly travel stipend of $50,000.
Norman’s effort was framed as greedy and self-serving. His tour never got off the ground.
And in 1997, Finchem announced plans for the World Golf Championships, which adhered to many of the same principles.
No one is saying a player, his name and his likeness shouldn’t be rewarded for popularity. That happens in all forms of the entertainment world, from sports to movies to music. It is what will eventually bring down the NCAA and amateur athletics entirely. But $40 million for popular players seems, well, a little greedy.
The PGA Tour has plenty of money, obviously. And they also to a degree control the amount of exposure a player gets through pairings and television windows. So that should be a concern for players who might not be in the bonus pool.
Could the Tour have used that money better? Of course. There are golfers on the Korn Ferry Tour, the Latinosamerica Tour and the Mackenzie Tour who would like to make a basic living, and the money could have been used for that. There are tournaments that fight hard to make money for local charities, and the bonus pool money could have been used to supplement those donations to perhaps a minimum for each event.
And there are efforts to grow the game of golf that could benefit from that money, cash that will instead go to already well-compensated players.
Who will get the money? Well, you can assume Tiger Woods will be the most popular golfer in the world for a while, even if he never plays again after his recent automobile accident. Players like Bryson DeChambeau and Phil Mickelson will be on the list, no doubt, as will Rickie Fowler, whose popularity and commercial appeal extend beyond his on-course accomplishments.
More money for top players (and team owners) is always going to be a driving force in sports. It’s why the NFL is going to a 17-game schedule next year. It’s why there was a proposal this week for a super league of soccer in Europe among the top clubs in the game, a proposal that crashed spectacularly when fans saw through the greed.
In a world where “social media influencer” is an actual job title and athletes have replaced movie stars as the world’s biggest celebrities (think Ronaldo and Lionel Messi as well as Tiger Woods), money for a player’s Q rating can’t be a surprise.
Even if it’s a bit of a surprise it showed up in the meritocracy of golf.
Larry Bohannan is The Palm Springs (Calif.) Desert Sun golf writer, part of the USA Today Network. He can be reached at larry.bohannan@desertsun.com.